The sun slowly starts over the palace to the West as the sky slowly fades into crimson but we’d never know it since we don’t have any windows. “How much paperwork do you have?” a voice calls out, “many another 5 minutes,” another voice responds.
*daaa dada da dadadada* As the clock hit 20:40, you hear the sound of loud music coming from outside. “What the hell is that?”
You and several of your coworkers gather around and decide to go check it out. As you make your way outside, you see a large PR truck parked across the street to the East. You might expect large PR trucks in Akihabara or Shinjuku, so it strikes you as very odd.
As you and your coworkers cross the street to get a closer look, you find that the side of the truck is actually open and someone is standing up there like a stand with giant screens with various PR and ad rolling across.
You see a man possibly in his 40s with white hair and a lab coat. You wonder if it’s some sort of brand character or something. He talks about a revolution in entertainment and gaming. He introduces their first-of-its-kind full immersion system and invites them to sign up for a special closed beta test (CBT) of a title: Down the Rabbit Hole. He explains that it’s a Fantasy World RPG and assures everyone that this is reality and nothing like some manga and anime you might have seen where people get “trapped” inside the game — that could never happen in real life!
You and your coworkers have felt that games lately have gotten a little boring lately and the CBT is going to be free in exchange for sharing your comments and opinions with them as a beta tester.
Your group and several other groups who have gathered around in Otemachi are invited to try it out. You take the immersion headset and are instructed to turn it on. As you activate the device, you see the sky range from a crimson to a dark grey sky covered with ominous looking clouds. As you turn around you find your office building has turned into a large wooden looking building rather than the concrete and glass you’d expect. As you turn back around, the building in front of you has also become a wooden building.
You turn back to where the truck was and the same man is still standing there. He goes on to welcome them to this world and reassures them again that this is nothing like those manga and anime. As you look around, you see your coworkers wearing fantasy-adventure genre clothing. The man directs your attention to magical stone slabs in your pockets. They are a dark charcoal colour but are told that there are ways of changing the colour. These magical slabs are magically attached to you and as such you can’t lose them. They wheel weightless but don’t float or anything like that. You are told that in many places, these magical slabs are used to facilitate transactions without carrying coins like they did many many centuries earlier. (Coins are really for collectors and special events).
You take a closer look and they seem to be a very familiar shape. When you touch it, words appear on the slab. You can move the words around on the slab and when you touch some words, you find the words change to other words. You feel like you’ve been this magical slab every day for the past 8 years and it comes naturally to you.
The man directs you to push the words up as more words appear from below. Seemingly at the bottom of the list of words that have magically appeared on the slab are a set of words in a language you cannot read yet somehow you instinctively know that it means log out.
As a group, everyone touch that logout word and find themselves back in the real world. You think that they must be really worried about the potential bad PR that those manga and anime may have caused for full immersion type systems.
Everyone logs in again and finds themselves in the middle of doing things. Some people are enjoying a drink at the tavern, some people were practicing their sword strikes against a dummy, and some were reading a book, etc.
Everyone gathers again now fully immersed in this new world. Not only are they just in a place that looks like Otemachi and wearing world-appropriate clothing but they have fully taken on their characters as a part of this world.
The Players from the Meta World still have to go to work and do other things in the Meta World but they will probably login into Down the Rabbit Hole on a regular basis. The Players can work to make money, go shopping, do recreational things, etc. They find that when the Players are not in the Adventure Worlds, the Characters still continue to go about their regular schedules. Characters still eat, drink, etc while the Players are not there and this costs money. The Characters also need lodging that costs money and won’t get any kind of salary until they make it past the (unpaid-intern) trainee rank. Hopefully they have enough time between training and studying to pick up a part time job or they may soon be broke, hungry, and sleeping in the park.